


All There In The Manual

by OctarineSparks



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1738070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctarineSparks/pseuds/OctarineSparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur learns things from reading books. That's what makes them facts. If Martin had a book, maybe he could learn them too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All There In The Manual

Arthur likes to know things. It's not always easy for him to understand, and this he does know, better than anyone, but it can never be said that he doesn't try. His mind is like a sponge, absorbing everything but unable to keep a hold of it all if he is over saturated, and it dribbles out, lost to him once more. 

His retention is good, not great, and it may take him a few tries to fully grasp the odd concept. But that's fine, because Mum has always been patient with him, even though sometimes she would grit her teeth and breathe heavily through her nostrils as she explained fractions to him for the fiftieth time. Numbers were always hard. They changed too much, and there always seemed to be far too many rules. 

He's much more at home with facts. Facts are good. Facts are simple. It is because of this that when his attention is caught by something he knows he is capable of understanding, he will seek out every last drop of information on the subject, until it really is nothing less than brilliant. 

Polar Bears. 

Timbuktu. 

Slightly haughty actresses from the fantasy genre. 

He will find out all there is to know, and more often than not these studies will fork off down other avenues, and then he knows more than he ever dared hope. Of course, he uses books to know things. Books are invaluable. Having the right book, well, it's almost like having a manual. 

A lot of things that Arthur wants to understand, however, don't come with a manual. (Some of them do, of course, but GERT-I's manual only tells him cold facts, as though she were nothing more than a machine, and Arthur knows her so much better than that). 

But sometimes Arthur wonders if he knows things that others do not, and it is in these moments that he wishes there really was a manual for everything, so other people could just understand the way that he did. 

Martin likes manuals, and Arthur considers it a perpetual shame that he doesn't come with one. 

Martin definitely doesn't have a manual. 

Martin, it seems to Arthur, doesn't have very much at all. 

Sometimes it troubles Arthur when Martin looks sad. He complains and laments and pulls at his hair, hating himself, and that is indeed troubling. 

Because if Martin did come with a manual, it would be one that Arthur would want to read, out loud to his captain, until the message sank in. 

Martin is brilliant. 

If only he knew, Arthur thinks, as Martin decries his bad luck as yet another thing in his life backfires, pushing him down, making him small. 

It's easy to see just how brilliant the Skip really is if you only stop to think about it. Even Arthur knows this, and he is often told that he doesn't know much of anything. 

Take Mum, for instance. Mum likes being the CEO of MJN, holds it out in front of her like a shield against age and convention. The little airdot means the world to her, something that is plain to see, and to lose it, well, that might just kill her. 

And yet, there had been a time, years ago, when she almost had lost it. When money was no longer physical, just numbers being pushed around, scrawled in bright red ink. There was no pilot, no one to fly that beautiful machine, and you can't be a charter service without someone at the front, with those all important four stripes. 

On the morning of Martin's interview, she had cried in the bathroom. She always hid from Arthur when she cried, inexplicably thinking that the one man in her life who would never let her down wouldn't know when she was upset. But she was. Very upset. She was scared that MJN was on its last legs, and that interviewing this man, this Martin Crieff, would be the final nail in the coffin when he rightly demanded what an airline captain was due. Which was, in all honesty, something which Carolyn simply could not afford, and the interview was a stupid idea, giving her hope when there was none. 

And perhaps Martin didn't know what he had done that day, when he agreed to fly for nothing just because he so badly wanted to fly at all. 

Perhaps Martin didn't know that his first act as captain of MJN Air had been to save it. 

If one day Arthur found that he held the manual for Martin Crieff in his hands, he would certainly start with that fact. Because things have rules, and order, and you should always start at the beginning. It's the law. 

Perhaps next there would be a chapter on how good a pilot Martin really is, and the only thing holding him back is the fact that he can't quite bring himself to believe it. But they don't put things in manuals that aren't true, and to Arthur, who has flown with Martin more times than he can remember and never felt really afraid, this is a fact. So perhaps if Martin saw it written down, in black and white with the appropriate technical jargon that Arthur has always thought as detrimental to the basic brilliantness of everything, he might finally start to believe it. 

But it's not just being a good pilot that makes Martin a good man. There's other things too. 

There's Douglas, for one thing. 

Arthur has know Douglas longer than he has known Martin, and the key difference is that Douglas knows he is brilliant. Douglas doesn't need reassurance from a book of all that he can do because he just knows, and because he is so wonderful, he projects that on to other people. Yes, he teases and schemes, but when it really matters it's obvious that he believes in each and every person at MJN, including Arthur. 

But Arthur wonders if he knows how much of that confidence is reinforced by Martin, every single day. 

Arthur doesn't like it when people are unhappy, but he knows they sometimes are. And while he is too, sometimes, he knows that he isn't the most complex of men, and that his unhappiness is caused more by disappointment, and can on occasion be easily fixed. 

Not so with Douglas, who is funny and clever and who lives each day on the cusp of the fragile darkness he carries inside him. 

Arthur doesn't know how to fix that, and while Martin might not understand that he can, he still does. 

The darkness is easy to get when you factor two ex wives into the equation, which soon became three. 

But Douglas always knew that there was a constant in his life. The man he had come to call captain, the man who always had the right thing to say to him, whilst saying the wrong things to everyone else. Martin made Douglas happier, and that was something even Arthur couldn't do very well. 

So then perhaps Arthur would read that part next, while Douglas wasn't around, because he would be too proud to admit that every word was true.

Maybe then Martin would start to see, and Arthur would flick back to the contents page of his manual, because it would be heavy reading, seeing as so much about Skip is brilliant, and Arthur much more prefers facts when they are short and to the point. 

Hey Skip, remember when we had that bird strike and you landed us on one engine and saved all of our lives?

And what about that princess, right? Not many people can say that they're dating royalty. 

What about that time Dad was being a bit, well, awful about GERT-I, and you helped to stop him?

Or when you carried that sheep in the rain for Mum, even though you're the last person who should owe anyone anything?

Or what about when you became the captain, and Mum got to feel important, and Douglas got to keep his job and I...

I got to stay with my family. 

On GERT-I. 

Because you know, I can't think of anything I'd rather do. 

And then Arthur would tell Martin that he had been so silly really, because he doesn't need a plane to fly. 

You don't, not when you're a superhero.


End file.
